A Very Sophisticated - And Yet Bizarre - Strategy Game

SOFTWARE REVIEW

September 13, 1997|By Newsday

In the beginning, there was Hammurabi.

That rudimentary computer game cast the player in the role of a god-king who made decisions about planting crops and other matters vital to the survival of his followers. And Hammurabi begat the strategic-planning genre: god games (Populous); war games (the Warcraft and Command and Conquer series); bureaucratic resource-management games (Sim City); and empire-building capitalist games (Civilization).

In these sims, or simulations, the view is usually from above the landscape. The player looks down, godlike, from on high and directs his workers and troops.

Meanwhile, Bullfrog Productions' long-delayed Dungeon Keeper, ($50) originally due Christmas of 1995, has finally arrived, and it is perhaps the most sophisticated - and, surely, the most bizarre - example of the genre we're likely to see this year. This is a game with a perverse sense of humor. It casts you as the devil - or a devil, anyway. Its tag line, in ads and on the CD-ROM case, declares: ''Evil is good.''

What is this telling us about the minds of game developers? Are they - and we - so jaded that we now need a perverse spin to have fun anymore? As brilliant as Dungeon Keeper is technically, have we reached a point where Hitler could be the good guy?

''No! No!'' says lead programmer Simon Carter. ''Under no circumstances is this meant to be an endorsement of evil. You're having fun taking the other side, the dark side, for a change. It's harmless, full of comic touches. If this was advocacy of real-life evil, of Hitler, for instance, then I would be very disturbed. But this is entirely a fantasy environment. The 'good' people in the game are really very irritating and very greedy. They're coming to steal your hard-earned gold. They get what they deserve.''

The object of Dungeon Keeper is to build a thriving evil empire underground and wipe out the competition. You direct your demonic minions to mine gold and jewels, to slaughter, imprison or torture invading computer-controlled heroes and creatures of rival dungeon keepers and to increase your wealth and territory by raiding enemy dungeons.

Unlike other strategy games, you have the choice of being above the fray or a participant in it. You can direct your 17 species of creatures - ranging from a fly to a dragon - as an invisible all-seeing satanic consciousness looking down on their activities. Or you can take possession of any individual and see through their eyes at ground level, which converts Dungeon Keeper from a god sim into a Doom-style first-person-perspective action adventure.